Definition
Heiner Müller (1929–1995) was a German dramatist, director, and public intellectual based in East Berlin. His work abounds with implicit and explicit references to Shakespeare, whom Müller regarded as the most poignant voice to articulate the terrors of modernity.
Life and Work
The work of Heiner Müller, who was one of the most influential playwrights and theatre practitioners of postwar Germany, is marked by an intensive engagement with Shakespeare’s poetics and aesthetics, as well as with his characters and plots. Shakespeare complements Müller’s other major influences: Bertolt Brecht and a strand of twentieth-century avant-garde theatre that is often associated with the name of Antonin Artaud. Müller’s work uses all three influences as mutual “antidotes” as he navigates between them and brings them into a productive tension.
Heiner Müller was born in 1929 in Eppendorf (Saxony). In 1933, when he was 4 years old, his father, a social democratic politician, was arrested by...
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References
Birkenhauer, Theresia. 2003. Regiearbeit. In Heiner Müller Handbuch, ed. Hans-Thies Lehmann, Patrick Primavesi, and Olaf Schmitt. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler.
Harich, Wolfgang. 1973. Der entlaufene Dingo, das vergessene Floß: Aus Anlaß der Macbeth-Bearbeitung von Heiner Müller. Sinn und Form 25: 3.
Müller, Heiner. 1982. Rotwelsch. Berlin: Merve.
———. 1984. Hamletmachine and other texts for the stage. Ed. and trans. Carl Weber. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications.
———. 1986. Gesammelte Irrtümer 1: Interviews und Gespräche. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Autoren.
———. 1993. Das eigentliche Geheimnis. In Regie: Heiner Müller, ed. Martin Linzer and Peter Ullrich. Berlin: Zentrum für Theaterdokumentation und –information.
———. 1998–2008. Werke. Ed. Frank Hörnigk. Frankfurt a. M./Berlin: Suhrkamp (12 volumes).
———. 2003. Cited. In Heiner Müller Handbuch, ed. Hans-Thies Lehmann, Patrick Primavesi, and Olaf Schmitt. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler.
Petersohn, Roland. 1993. Heiner Müllers Shakespeare-Rezeption: Texte und Kontexte. Frankfurt am Main/New York: Peter Lang.
Ramalhete Gomes, Miguel. 2014. Texts waiting for history: William Shakespeare re-imagined by Heiner Müller. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.
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Quiring, B. (2022). Müller, Heiner. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99378-2_38-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99378-2_38-1
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Müller, Heiner- Published:
- 17 March 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99378-2_38-2
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Müller, Heiner- Published:
- 13 March 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99378-2_38-1